1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to video streams, and more particularly, to electronic devices and methods for processing video streams.
2. Related Art
Video standards such as the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) standard, which is ancillary to the H.264 standard, allow a single video stream to contain video information of different views. For example, these standards allow a first elementary stream (e.g. a right-view video stream) and a second elementary stream (e.g. a left-view video stream) to be combined together to form a single multi-view video stream. Such a multi-view video stream can also be referred to as a stereo video stream.
For an electronic device to process a multi-view video stream the electronic device may firstly separate and store the first elementary stream and the second elementary stream into a buffer for further processing thereafter. Since the first elementary stream and the second elementary stream may be haphazardly mixed in the multi-view video stream, the electronic device may have to reserve a large buffer space for consecutively buffering the first elementary stream and the second elementary stream in terms of smoothly displaying the multi-view video stream.
If the buffer space is insufficient, the electronic device may be stuck in a deadlock. When there is a deadlock, the electronic device may have no choice but to sacrifice its user's video-watching experience by discarding some of the buffered elementary streams prematurely, i.e. before these images are processed or displayed.